Colonia de árboles pájaro [Bird Tree Colony] (2011)
5-ink screen printing on board
72.2 x 101 cm
BA Collection
Registration No.: 2011.191.1
Orbis sensualium pictus (1658) by Jan Comenius was the first illustrated book for children. It is a kind of atlas of all Baroque knowledge, where simple images were intended to make its content more accessible to children. From then on, the graphic arts played a substantial role in illustrating texts for children, on the understanding that images had to offset the lack of reading experience of the texts’ target audience.
David Martín here reverses this traditional subordinate position of illustration: the image does not exemplify any pre-existing text, but, on the contrary, seems to contain an implicit narration. The eyes of any child – much more astute than we are willing to acknowledge – could well reconstruct the unpublished story of the bird trees just by looking at this image.